Why did a humpback whale save a seal's life? (2016)

So, as in many cases when scientists (or science writers) discuss the motivations of mammals with big brains, they go to a lot of effort to avoid the obvious conclusion, which is that the humpback did it for a similar reason to why a human might make a coyote lay off an attack on a raccoon or possum. We wouldn&#x27;t always, but plenty of humans would, and it wouldn&#x27;t be for any particularly abstract or intellectual reason, it&#x27;s more like, &quot;the coyote is being mean, make it stop because I can.&quot;<p>Sometimes, scientists remind me of mid-20th century behaviorists trying to explain human behavior.

The hypothesis at the end of the article assumes humpback whales are just acting instinctively. I think it is much more likely that the whales are able to reason that denying other prey to their babies&#x27; predator is a good thing. In addition to keeping the orca population in check and reducing the energy available to them, the humpbacks might also be fully capable of holding a grudge.

I know somebody who studied orcas in school and she said that humpbacks tend to give orcas a hard time whenever they meet them. It’s understandable since orcas often attack their young ones.

The simple answer might be the right one, it just felt bad for the seal. Nobody really knows how intelligent humpback whales are.

I hate this tendency of trying to reduce the behavior of <i>conscious</i> living things (such as whales, dolphins etc.), who are capable of emotions to simple &quot;inadvertent&quot; rules.<p>That&#x27;s like saying: I believe Mr. Pittman, who is otherwise capable of complex behavior, did not consider the meaning of his words before uttering them. What he said was simply an inadvertent response to being asked a question.<p>You wouldn&#x27;t even say that about a dog following orders.

&quot;If a lion could talk, we would not understand him.&quot;<p>I would differentiate being able to characterize the behavior from being able to &#x27;understand&#x27; the behavior. If for the sake of argument, we assume orcas and humpback whales have higher brain functions around the level of humans, I would argue it&#x27;s still impossible for us to understand the humpbacks motivation because his mind is completely alien to ours.

Crazy that the commentators have to insist on selfish reason in the end. May be for one second even if unthinkable for human that whale has a good heart.<p>Good save.

SETI pointed at the sky, with intelligent species abound at home.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Might be that they are feeling pressure in the environment making them more aggressive for whatever is remaining of their habitat. Also, a shrinking ice habitat will make it more probable that they will cross paths. This are just thoughts, not an expert.

Maybe they do it for similar reasons humans have for finding baby non human mammals cute and worth saving?<p>That said, do we know why we find baby non human mammals cute? I&#x27;ve always figured that it was a false positive based on features shared with human babies.

Isn&#x27;t it possible that a significant fraction of mature humpback whales have had bad encounters with killer whales when they were younger and just always mess with them when they can?

And why do killer whales never kill humans in the wild?

May be it could not see properly and thought seal was a baby whale.